‘Liberty Finds No Refuge in a Jurisprudence of Doubt’: Sexual Morality as Seen by Supreme Courts in France and the USA

Abstract

No Tea Party in France, concludes Marc Olivier Baruch after having examined and compared the French and American judicial review processes with regard to the issue of abortion. Although fully appointed by political authorities, with very few of them having a serious legal competence, members of the French Conseil constitutionnel had no choice but to accept the law-makers’ intention, by handing down in 1975 a decision that produced no constitutional debate—the same process being repeated in 2013 with the validation of same-sex marriage law, in spite of impressive demonstrations led by the Catholic Church and the most retrograde part of the French right. In France, judicial review is both too recent and limited a tool to be a weapon in the conservative arsenal.